"IS ANYBODY PAYING ATTENTION?" The mindful view of an educated Buddhist blogger who uses critical thinking, evidence, facts, and investigation to come up with his opinions instead of fear based ideologies.

Saturday, May 26, 2012

I found a survey that speaks to the question I have a military spending. To begin with, our military, like many parts of our government programs, is the most over bloated, over funded, and over expensive travesty in our nation. If you want to scream about taxes being wasted, you should see how much stuff gets thrown away by the military so as to increase their deficit and purposely wasted money so they can ask for a bigger budget next year. That has been going on since Ike Eisenhower in the fifties warned us to "Beware the military industrial complex". Previous to the end of World War 2 we didn't have a huge armament industry. We only geared up for war in case we were threatened but at the time, some felt that we shouldn't wait for an emergency like Pearl Harbor to get ready to defend ourselves. We have been ready since. But at a certain point, defense became an industry. It became an industry for the unemployable in any other field to take shelter. There are those who joined, went to college, learned technical skills, but, many will never have the skills to do more than kill people. If the guy who isn't smart enough to work at a car wash is encouraged to go into the military to "become a man" or women who don't feel comfortable in mainstream society become comfortable in the military, then, we have created an employment vehicle and the military looks at their budget as such. They use the word defense and security as if we are under threat constantly but that, as we found out after the fifties, with Civil Defense Alerts and bomb shelters, that was all government smoke and mirrors designed to make us feel comfortable like the "duck and cover" program or showing the movie "Reefer Madness" to elementary school children. Eventually the public figured out that duck and cover was actually silly. Some news commentator came on television (the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson) and explained to us that we were paying for a government program to teach children that if they hid under their desk when a blast that could irradiate the brick wall besides them went off, they would be safe if they cowered under their desk. We also figured out that "Reefer Madness" was an alarmist exaggeration and had no validity in fact, basically a propaganda film, and like so many other Hollywood versions of the United States and our society's issues it was designed to cause us to lapse into a state of fear over something that the people who wrote the movies had no real knowledge of. So we paid and we keep paying because they keep us in a state of fear over "national defense". Here is a chart that shows where our tax dollars actually go as per the financial budget of Uncle Sam through our congress.

As you can see, we spend 57 percent of the money collected in taxes (and then some) on National Defense and the Defense Department makes sure they spend every penny they get and then some each year so that the following year they can ask for a bigger budget. This has been going on since the Eisenhower administration left office. We are now living through the danger zone that Ike warned us about on January 17th, 1971. If we put half that money into retraining soldiers instead of keeping them working in the military, then, our nation would prosper immensely. It is now time to start thinking in those terms instead of trying to be the world's police force. That was never our job and the people who think it is are eventually going to a) lead us into a state of bankruptcy, and b) keep sucking our economy dry and lead us into another type of financial system like socialism when capitalism fails under the strain. An over bloated sense of empowerment and too much military spending is what caused the collapse of the Soviet Union and we may be following into their footsteps ever since we walked into Iraq and Afghanistan. I pray that we never see that day but to avoid it, we have to start thinking differently. We need to do that now, not whenever the predatory capitalists decide to stop sucking the economy dry and hoarding the nation's wealth. From now on, any politician of any party that says he is going to do something different and change our nation needs to have his feet held to the fire and be made to explain his plan to do that.

Friday, May 25, 2012

Once Again FOX NEWS is making headlines for being liars disguised as poor misrepresented biased commentators. Just because they call it Fox News, are they responsible for the gullible people who take their lies and propaganda as fact when they report it as such and use the excuse that THAT WASN"T the actual NEWS department? (The critical thinking answer is YES!)

People used to laugh at conspiracy theorists.

Now they have their own channel on cable television. Recently Bill O'Reilly told Glenn Beck that he could find a conspiracy in a pair of socks but Bill doesn't see his own alarmist fear provoking rants in the same way. Beck tried ranting and people laughed at him so now he has reverted to fake crying and the simple minded in this country believe him. One of the biggest problems for people like that is that most of them don't own a computer, just a television and they can't go on YouTube and watch Beck placing Vicks under his eyes to make them water so he can fake cry on his promo pictures (see the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m692Tqbnbxo ) . This shows the type of cheap snake oil salesman conman that Beck actually is but O'Reilly seems to actually be telling himself that he isn't lying. He has moments that he breaks down and actually starts to admit that he is constantly lying but they are brief. Bill Maher confronted O'Reilly on this and he continued making excuses and pointing fingers instead of blaming anyone who repeated the obvious lies in a weak attempt at an attack against President Obama. So according to O'Reilly, reporting an outlandish lie instead of confirming it on the FOX NEWS CHANNEL isn't a deliberate lie by FOX NEWS CHANNEL if it isn't done by the actual news department, EVEN THOUGH they never define the difference between opinion people and news people (Bill seems to think there is a difference when they are all billed as commentators on FOX NEWS.). NOW, my opinion is that if you call yourself FOX NEWS then you are supposed to be reporting actual researched and confirmed news, not reporting lies that sound insane to a bunch of people who want to find anything to blame the black man in the White House for.Watch the clip at : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yn7_8QL2weQ

Saturday, May 12, 2012

When I look at the words "marriage equality" I wonder why anyone should be continuing to think that being gay is a learned pattern or a choice after the people who were wrong about it originally (Masters and Johnson) had changed their opinion. I realise that it is convenient for some to make this an issue. I am writing this in response to the recent remarks on the blog of Bristol Palin. I find it ironic that the child of a Republican laughing stock should end up talking about someone else's take on discrimination and make comments to a) defend her mother and her mother's party, and b) be involved in a political discussion about families and marriage since she has neither. This is the child who we were told is off limits to discuss and who is being used by her mother's political campaign to attack the president who soundly beat her mother and her running mate, presidential hopeful and lead attack dog of the obstructionist movement in congress, John McCain.
Just like the hate from the KKK, this kind of prejudice against another section of our society, human beings that have done nothing to attack her mother for being an idiot who mouths colloquial expressions that should have made anyone with a brain stop and check themselves, apologize, and resign - which shows that Sarah Palin is a bigot. We don't have hear her say it, she is being reverberated through the ramblings of one of her offspring who attacked president Obama for speaking out in favor of same sex couples being married. I don't understand being gay because I am not gay, but that doesn't mean that I believe that gay people should be denied the right to the same legal rights of everyone else in America.

The Big Argument

There is always someone who opposes anything that he doesn't understand and that isn't someone who developed critical thinking. The idea that their "savior" whom they continue to call "Jesus", not realizing he was a Middle Eastern Jew who was a reformer who was anti-religion, some have fashioned their own religion supposedly about his teachings. I could go on about the fact that the letter J wasn't present in any form of language of that time period, but that would detract from the actual argument. The leader and savior of their religion taught that love was the way. He, like the Buddha in India, walked the earth on a pilgrimage to teach people the evils of religion and that they needed to quit following dogma and start loving each other without restrictions on "types" of people. He said that it would be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to get into heaven.
But his supposed followers took what he said about being against religion and made a religion out of it. Then they arranged it so rich men could profit from investing in it. They started teaching a priority system. It goes like this; God is above the church, the church is above man, rich men are above poor men, men are above females, and Christians are superior to everyone else. And this hate filled message, straight from a person who fathered a child out of wedlock is being spread by someone who is attacking someone who is an actual family man with children of his own, who is married and lives in the sanctity of a real "traditional family" for being open minded enough to realize that marriage should be a right in the United States for everyone who pays taxes. The movie "Chuck and Larry" that scoffed at the idea that someone would actually get married for insurance purposes showed what a fiasco that would turn out to be. But the first words out of the mouth of most conservatives when asked about their objections to gay marriage is that some of the rights and privileges that they enjoy, like insurance family plans could possibly be available to someone who could fake it for that reason.
It makes me wonder how anyone can call themselves a Christian and then practice the hate of another human being based on their sexual orientation. That isn't what Yeshua (Jesus to European-ized Christians who still use the "Latinization" of the name) would condone this continued prejudice against anyone is ridiculous. I will fight discrimination against anyone based on being who they are no matter what the situation. I will defend the president's right to have his opinion and I happen to agree with it in this instance. I also find it distasteful that the Palins use the child that was off limits to criticism to criticize anyone they have a political rivalry with. If she is off limits to criticism from the other party then she should keep to herself the political propaganda beaten into her by her mother. I guess hypocrisy is hereditary in some cases.

Thursday, May 10, 2012

One Day The Poor Will Have Nothing Left To Eat But The Rich And The Republicans Just Rang the Dinner Bell

The Republicans in the U.S. Congress/House of Representatives just passed the Ryan bill which I thought was considered laughable until now. It was satired in the cartoons as being so frightening that one constituent hearing about it thought it was a preview from the movie "Hunger Games". After hearing about it, it occurred to me that like most Americans, no one is going to believe that anyone in congress could actually believe the American people would let them get away with such a thing, but lo' and behold, they did it. For those people who have been predicting food shortages, riots in the streets, poor people living in the United States like someone in third world Indian slums, I am predicting now that their time is near. Get ready for the next generation of Bonnies and Clydes. The time is coming where no one will be safe and that time is near. We know that poverty causes crime waves and self inflicted poverty is suicide. We saw the Soviet Union and every other nation in the world afterwards that was held down by poverty until the people finally gave up on listening one more day and tore the place down.

The idea that it can't happen here will become a lost cause like it did when 9-11 happened. Our country can take so much but ANY people, when told that they don't really count, will quit caring and then anarchy follows. Those of us who are waiting and watching, expecting and preparing for the end are feeling it's proximity in every decision made by the Republicans in congress lately.

Just lately, the Tea-vangelist American Taliban has started the whole "get the government out of my life" tirade and cut off their own noses to spite their faces without realizing it. The Republicans in congress knew exactly who to turn to for undying loyalty in the wrong direction, a group of people who is so ill informed that they want to shoot themselves in the foot by blaming the same people who are trying to save them.

They have staged a war on anyone they can. First it was interracial marriage, now abortion and contraception, women's rights, marriage rights for gay people, women's gynecological health care, and so on, ad nauseum. These are all things that we already fought and stuggled for, changed the laws to be what we considered right, and now they want to try to change everything back to pre-50s standards of thinking. The thing that gripes me is that most of these people are my generation. The generation that watched their parents build this country with their sweat, tears, blood, with the work of their lives to give these people a better position in life so they can now call themselves "self made successes" and crap on the working class whose ancestors' work built the fortunes that they are now using to step on the people whose labor created their family's wealth.

They don't want a real life to exist for people who have less than they do. I can't say that I am afraid of this happening, I am anxiously expectant of the coming of the people's revolution in the United States. When any people have been down trodden for long, a violent outbreak always occurs and then the problem is either resolved by the present regime or by who ever the rebel force becomes. Either way there is a change that will resolve the whole matter. Either the rebels get killed and imprisoned or the ruling class get killed and imprisoned. Also, either way, everyone gets to eat.

Saturday, May 5, 2012

When it comes to American politics, do we really need one more stupid comment that makes everyone stare in slack jawed amazement? We have been waiting to see who Mitt Romney really is and I believe we got a real brief but cognizant glimpse of who he is, based on the comment his wife, Ann, made publicly about women's concern for the economy.

After this statement we didn't see any of Ann Romney's feigned indignation over being told that being a stay at home mom wasn't working. She has never worked as Mitt says, "in the private sector". But she acted like she was mortally wounded when Hillary Rosen exclaimed to an audience when Mrs. Romney said this:

Do we want this couple in the White House representing America to the rest of the world? I don't.

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

I am going to preface this today with a video from the show where Alex Castellanos proved that conservatives can't listen, think, and understand anything that their handlers haven't taught them to.

The Conservative Problem:

Right now after several public discourses involving a difference of opinion about the present state of affairs having to do with our knowledge of the actual historical facts and relevance of evidence, it has become evident and should be noted that most conservatives, although the science industry they seem to disavow and hate - has tried to excuse them from responsibility for - they just won't believe or understand things that are inconvenient for them to explain. Anyone who has lived with a person with dementia has experienced the same thing. When something that is blaming (affixes guilt) or causes them to feel any beginnings of an inkling of shame, or would require a response involving some actual correction of a problem, they just deny that it is real, which is easier than believing the problem exists. I say that in that manner because I have seen someone who was given facts by an authority figure insist while watching "black and white evidence" presented before them, that it was fictitious. Somehow they believe that some magical act of diversion, slight of hand, or deception to those without "conservative" vision are being deceived and it explains the whole reason that Barnum and Bailey became famous.

Abe Lincoln said that, "You can fool some of the people all of the time. You can fool all of the people some of the time. But you can't fool all of the people all of the time."

P.T. Barnum said that the only person who can be fooled every time is the one who is convinced that he can't be fooled.

E.G. After Alex Castellanos sat at the same table with Rachel Maddow the other day and in his usual condescending manner stated that she was misinformed that women were actually paid less in the United States for doing the same job, she then stated her references and the statistics that were documented by a national study that proved her whole point, but he not only wouldn't shut up long enough to quit interrupting her while she spoke on what most of us would have considered a matter of research, even after he made his point, he had to keep repeating that she was wrong. I went through, like most people who actually use critical thinking, a few reasons in my own mind, why he might have been at odds with her view.
Reason #1) To me, this made me wonder at first, if she might have been wrong, after doing the research myself, I can see she was not only correct, she was quoting the exact information on the study. Her information was completely accurate.
Reason #2) Alex Castellanos is an expert on these matters and so has other statistics that he can refer to as to why she was wrong. He stated that men actually do approximately 47 hours work when working a job they get paid for forty hours of and that women, on the other hand, will only work 41 hours while getting paid for forty. I am trying to find what brain trust came up with those figures.
From Wikipedia: "... Alejandro "Alex" Castellanos (born 1954) is a U.S. Republican Party political media consultant who specializes in television advertising, and was a top media adviser to George W. Bush's 2004 presidential campaign and Mitt Romney's 2008 presidential campaign . " This man opposes Equal Opportunity Employment and anything that isn't part of the present pro-corporatism dialogue that has become the better part of Republican speeches.
I found the article that shows the disparity and figures that women are under with nine more statistics than this on the internet at "Collegetimes.us" that everyone in the United States should be aware of, at http://collegetimes.us/10-surprising-statistics-on-women-in-the-workplace/ .
So, unlike Castellanos, Maddow backed up her statement with facts. The fact that, when given this information, it was more convenient in Alex's mind to dismiss something that was an inconvenient truth for him at the moment as "just plain wrong" instead of being teachable and conceding that he might have been incorrect, just never occurs to him or any other true conservative because part of the being a true conservative is being able to self delude yourself into believing that you are always right and that never admitting that you are incorrect, despite the evidence evident to everyone around you and shown by everything around you - somehow makes you right 100 % of the time. Most of us call that being a Neanderthal, being ignorant, blind, truly tunnel visioned with no help, or ego centric. That is why all the public discourse, public debate, etc. doesn't do any good when it comes to Republican candidates, because when they supposedly debate each other over their "issues", they nitpick on circumstances surrounding a completely ignorant and wrong premise instead of challenging the premise itself.
Watching the Republican debates, for me, is like watching a demented gourmet who, while having a mental breakdown, decides to find several other people in the same stage of dementia, and just like himself, they each have an "opinion" (although most people know immediately that facts aren't open for debate or a matter of opinion) on the heated debate over the proper type of sauce to put on a dog turd before eating it, in order to make it more palatable. They definitely wouldn't eat it themselves but they want "the little people" to accept this as an alternative to food stamps.
It doesn't seem to occur to that person that avoiding the dog turd is the answer. When they have argued over and been given a selection of manners of preparation methods, cooking times, temperatures, and methods, eating it and having been given a myriad of choices by their "handlers". The handlers I speak of are their masters. I am speaking of the political pundits and others who they consider their authorities, including clergymen, politicians, and celebrities.

Refusing to believe in reality - shows that once again the dilemma of being the one who is trying to be fair and respectful in any type of decision making process and allowing for their "opinion" in any social situation, legal, jurisdictive, or financial means that to them, you already lost the argument. It is no wonder that they don't seem to be able to be "politically correct", it isn't a choice for them since they believe whatever they think is supreme knowledge that supercedes all other priorities.
And in taking a risk at being politically incorrect myself, I will just say that the one contributing factor about conservatives that I am seeking to understand, is that which will cause me to look like I am not being fair- OR is something I will just let the dictionary decide for me.

1. lacking ordinary quickness and keenness of mind; dull.
2. characterized by or proceeding from mental dullness; foolish; senseless: a stupid question.
3. tediously dull, especially due to lack of meaning or sense; inane; pointless: a stupid party.
4. annoying or irritating; troublesome: Turn off that stupid radio.
5. in a state of stupor; stupefied: stupid from fatigue."

Although some teaparty members and such of the Republican followers who seem to appear like a crowd of homeless people in order to hold up signs that are mispelled complaing about things that never happened or will never occur are what I would say fall into this characterisation, I can't believe someone of a position of respect and authority in the community could be "stupid" as it is stated in the dictionary, there still seems to be something wrong, let's ask for another definition and see if it fits.

1. having false or unrealistic beliefs or opinions: Senators who think they will get agreement on a comprehensive tax bill are delusional.
2. Psychiatry . maintaining fixed false beliefs even when confronted with facts, usually as a result of mental illness: He was so delusional and paranoid that he thought everybody was conspiring against him.
Sometimes, de·lu·sion·ar·y ."

I think that I've made my point. If you read the sentence used to describe the first definition, concerning a senator that believes in bipartisanship, it makes my point altogether. If you get a conservative alone and ask them a question they aren't familiar with about a topic - he either pulls out a list of things he has memorized, or has to go back and check with his "handlers" to answer it. Where most of us actually think in terms of being fair and respectful of others or what will do the most common good for all, not just a few, we can answer those questions based on fairness and common sense logic, using critical thinking for tough decisions, we know internally what we should do. We all in a somewhat softer, more humane way, commonly decide what we should do and seek the others who like ourselves, seek the truth and common sense without being jaded, to reassure ourselves that the world hasn't gone mad when something bad happens to us. I think I can safely say that this is the biggest diffence between what we know and all the knowledge that is out there available in the Universe.
Personally, I would rather seek the latter.

About Me

I am an Arizona native, born and raised in Phoenix, although I have lived for brief times in other places. I am what one would call a Centrist. I don't believe in radical left or right stances and refuse to let the low information, regressive, right wing people call me "liberal" since that would be left of reality based on opinion, and I believe in facts and research of evidence.